


More irrevocable than misfortune

by Nineveh_uk



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Gen, Illnesses, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-16
Updated: 2011-06-16
Packaged: 2017-10-20 11:52:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nineveh_uk/pseuds/Nineveh_uk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifteen years after the events of Cryoburn, Cordelia faces her own mortality – and someone else faces something worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More irrevocable than misfortune

The doctor leans forward kindly to a woman who is not as old as she ought to be for this.

‘You do understand?’

‘Yes,’ says Cordelia. ‘Although I had hoped it might be a tumour. Irreversible and progressive premature senility was not – what I wanted.’

‘I’m sorry,’ says the doctor. ‘We can discuss plans for your future care on another occasion. But there is one thing - ’ She hesitates. She is very young, thinks Cordelia, by the look of her. Five years older than Helen, perhaps. But it seems that hers is not, after all, a complex or difficult case. ‘I understand that you lived for some years on Barrayar and have family there.’

‘Yes.’

‘There is no reason you shouldn’t travel. “Rapid onset” is a comparative term. As you are aware, the quality of medical care available on Barrayar is subject to income and social status.’ She manages not to add _’Barbarians!’_ though Cordelia can see her thinking it and it is entirely true. ‘However if you have access to those resource there is no,’ she pauses again, choosing her words carefully. Not treatment. Even now, there is no treatment. ‘care that would not be available to you to the same standard as on Beta. The cultural situation would be different, and your social entitlements would probably be diminished. But you would have your family. And there are other cultural preferences that you would be able to access. If you wished.’

Cultural preferences. Ah. Honorable suicide, Barrayaran style, is not easily accessed on Beta. Although Cordelia does, in fact, have a nerve disruptor hidden in her apartment. Just in case.

‘I thank you for your courage, Dr Welsome. But I was born a Betan, and I think I should prefer to die as one.’

She leaves with the usual collection of pamphlets, knowing they will not make the situation any better. She must ask Miles to come out here, while he still can.

*

Cordelia considers her care options and names her proxies. She apologises to Mark for omitting him and he understands although Kareen does not. Miles, fortunately, is impractical, and this is an area of Betan law that will stand up even to Miles at his most insistent.

There is something else she ought to remember, but she cannot.

*

Margo likes Cordelia. She is younger than the other patients, which makes her sad, but it is also a connection. Margo is older than many of the nurses. This is her second chance; a late émigré to Beta Colony, identified as an ideal candidate for elder care, she is very happy in her job. According to her records Cordelia once lived on Barrayar, and must be watched for any of the possible long-term complications of native pathogens. No wonder she ran away, Margo thinks. Barrayar is a native pathogen all by itself. But Cordelia is at peace with herself, content. ‘I did what I could,’ she once said to Margo. ‘I did more than I could. We can’t ask ourselves for more than that.’

She is only very occasionally distressed, by something she cannot remember.

*

‘Plasma mirrors!’

She says it very clearly, the first time she has spoken for days. The most articulate she has been for months.

‘He knew about the plasma mirrors. He knew _before_.’

And then,

‘He dropped the basket.’

It must be something – perhaps two somethings - she remembers, Margo thinks, and yet she never says it when anyone is in sight. Once Margo tries to ask her, what about the plasma mirrors, Cordelia, do you want to tell me, but it upsets her, and she doesn’t ask again.

*

Cordelia has a lot of visitors. Friends, former colleagues, family, all come long after she can reliably recognise them. She brightens at the company nonetheless, rising out of a quiet that Margo would term contemplative did she not know better.

‘I don’t particularly like communal singing,’ she had said when Margo first knew her. ‘I never seemed to know the songs.’

*

Margo doesn’t know this woman, but Cordelia does. She doesn’t say anything, but eyes flicker in a way that Margo knows is the last remnants of recognition.

‘When she is dead,’ says the woman, ‘she will be buried on Barrayar and my father will be buried at her feet.’ She kisses Cordelia’s cheek, strokes the hair that is still far from wholly white. ‘Barrayar does not deserve her.’

The woman, Elena, is distressed by the visit, but hides it as best she can in front of Cordelia. Margo takes her out to the visitors’ common room for a cup of tea.

*

The man wears Barrayaran Imperial Service uniform, although his accent is different from the other high ranking Barrayaran men who have come to see Cordelia. His complexion is different, too, his skin paler, softer, more Betan, though mouth and eyes are lined. To Margo, who did not, he looks like a man who grew up in a Dome. She asks what he thinks of Beta Colony, and he speaks with admiration of the interior architecture.

‘Miles sends his love,’ he says. ‘He’ll come next month.’

Miles is the Barrayaran son. He sends letters, apologising for his inadequacy in the form, but better each time. Cordelia no longer gives much response to screens. She is better with people, although this man seems rather tongue-tied. He respects her, thinks Margo, greatly, but perhaps he doesn’t know her as well as he would like. He excuses himself for five minutes, and on his return stands behind her, looking at the back of her head before bracing himself to face her again. But he talks about her family, naturally, enthusiastically, the doings of the younger generations, and about politics too, reports and gossip mixed together. Margo thinks that Cordelia likes that.

*

He comes again the next day, and says it must be for the last time.

‘Sorry it has to be so short, but – you know how it is.’

‘I know,’ says Cordelia.

He leaves her petting one of the kittens. She laughs at them.

‘I don’t suppose I’ll see her again,’ he says to Margo, watching her from the doorway. ‘She is a very great woman, you know. She survived Barrayar.’ His mouth twists oddly for a moment. ‘She never let it eat her.’

The kitten jumps from Cordelia’s lap, and pads away across the room.

‘Plasma mirrors,’ she says clearly. ‘Dear God, he knew about the plasma mirrors.’

Margo feels the man beside her freeze.

‘It’s all right,’ she tells him, ‘it’s something she says sometimes. I think it must be the Escobaran war, but she doesn’t really remember it. See, she isn’t upset.’

Across the room, the kitten washes an ear.

‘The Emperor put all the eggs in one basket, and he dropped the basket. His own son. And Aral did it for him.’

The uniformed man doesn’t move, but whispers only, 'That's why - '

‘It’s like that occasionally – they’ve tried to forget something, but that only means they remember it differently. I don’t think it matters as long as it doesn’t hurt them. If it does, of course, I refer them for therapy. Cordelia doesn’t need therapy.’

‘Barrayarans.’

‘No,’ says the man, quietly, desperately, ‘not me.’

Margo prepares to lead him off for tea – or something more stimulating. He looks in need of it. ‘It isn’t your fault,’ she says kindly, ‘it doesn’t mean anything. I’m not even sure it is the war. She might have kept chickens on Barrayar, mightn’t she? It isn’t all vat protein there.’ Margo laughs quietly, ‘I’ll never make a complete Betan, you know. I don’t think vat eggs are nearly as good as real ones.’

‘She said to me once,’ says the man, still staring entranced at the back of that head, white streaked with red, ‘in fact I believe she said it quite a lot, that great tests are a great gift. To refuse the test is to refuse the gift. To forget this would be to refuse a gift from her.

‘I can’t do that,’ he says suddenly clear, ‘but I don’t know what to do if I remember it.’

‘You do what you think is best,’ says Margo, in whose experience this old formula is usually reassuring. Of course, they don’t always do what is best, but hopefully best coincides with what they want and things work out.

‘I accept her gift. I don’t know what to do with it, but I accept it. As someone else says, quite often, Let’s see what happens.’ His voice has a touch of hysteria to it. ‘Whatever that is. Whatever I make of it. God knows; I don’t.’

He walks swiftly back to the woman in the armchair, kisses her once more, and allows Margo to lead him out. She could leave him at the visitors’ common room, but when she can Margo prefers to escort her patients’ visitors to the front entrance. It is easier for them, she thinks, not to begin the inevitable reflections while still in the building.

‘I suppose I shan’t see her again,’ he says, once more out under the Dome.

‘It’s all right, I’m not asking you to say break Cordelia’s medical confidentiality. Her son told me. This is a deathbed visit. Only I didn’t think it was contagious.’

It is a common worry, but Margo knows better than to reassure him as she usually would. He doesn’t mean that.

‘I am a dead man,’ says Duv Galeni.


End file.
